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Player Written Books
This article is based on the great guide from Vyrin found here . Writing Materials There are two types of writing material in the game currently: books and sheets of paper. A book consists of multiple pages of text with a cover design. You will first need to acquire a “Blank Book” to write and publish one yourself. They can be bought at a “Book Merchant” NPC which can be found in several of the largest cities of Novia. Besides purchasing, a blank book can be crafted with * a basic cover (same as the one bought from the “Book Merchant”) * a Hospitaller cover (the Hospitallers are a group dedicated to helping new players, therefore, any books with this cover should be oriented toward that purpose) * reshape the look of the crafted book with any of the many patterns available at book merchant NPCs Right now, it makes far more sense to buy blank books at a “Book Merchant”because they are very cheap. The recipe to craft blank books takes an outsized amount of resources. This may change as the game develops, but currently there are no specific plans. A note about weight: The current weight of books and sheets of paper is quite large for their size. If you are buying a lot of them, be prepared for a slow, encumbered walk back to where you can put them in storage before you use them. Publishing “Publishing” in this game is the process of turning a blank book or sheet of paper into one filled with your writing. The process changes the book or sheet of paper into a finished state which cannot be changed. In order to write in a book or on a sheet of paper AND be able to publish it and not loose the text, it must be in your inventory. To begin the process, double-left-click the one you want to use, or you can also right-click and choose the “Use Item” option. When you begin the book publishing process you will see this window: You are offered two options: “Import Text” and “Write”. The first allows you to import a text file as the writing in your book. The second allows you to type text directly into the book. (Please also note that the windows for books and sheets of paper have a thumbtack icon and a red X in the upper-right corner. The first pins the window and the second closes it.) Importing text is a far more powerful way to create books, so let’s look at this option first. When you click the “Import Text” button, you will see this window: There are a few options and some additional information to consider here. First, you must type a title for the book, which can be a maximum of 32 characters. The title is very important because once you publish a book, this will be the name of the book in your inventory, as well as its tool-tip description. Take note that the title is also reproduced on the left-hand page at the top, right-justified in a brown color different from the default color for the text in the book. The combo box below the title allows you to choose the alphabet used for the book. You cannot mix the English and runic alphabet in the same book at this time, it must all be one or the other. Continuing on with the book publishing window, below the font selection combo box, there is a list of text files available to import into the book. You may select one file to be the text for your book. In order to import a file, and to see it listed here, you must place it in the folder indicated below the box which begins “C:\Users\….” To save time getting text files into the proper folder, create a short cut to it from somewhere easier to access on your system. Sometimes you may begin to publish and realize you didn’t put the text file in this folder. If you move a text file into the folder after opening this window or modifying the text file, make sure you hit “Refresh” in the upper right of the box in order to see/update it. Files must be in plain text format to be seen here, with the .txt file extension. Each book has a limit of 8,000 characters, which is admittedly quite short. You can see how long a text file is when you select it. The example text file in the picture is 4,344 character long. If your file is over 8,000 characters, the number will be red and the “Publish” button will not light up while it is selected. Once you enter a title and select a valid text file, the publish button will light up and you will see your text in the book. Unfortunately, at this point, you cannot move the overlay window out of the way, but you can page through the book to make sure it looks right to you. You change pages by clicking on the upturned corners at the bottom left and right. If you need to go back and make changes, the can edit the text file, save it, and select it again from the list in the overlay window. This allows you to make easy changes. If you want to quit the whole process hit “Cancel”. When you are comfortable with your review, hit the “Publish” button. You will get a message box that looks like this: Once you publish a book, it cannot be changed, hence this final step. Hitting publish will import the text and show you the finished book. If you find a mistake afterwards, you will have to recreate the entire book from scratch with a new blank book. There is no editing process after a book is published. Currently text in books always starts on the right-facing page and this is numbered as page 1. There is another option for publishing books, the “Write” option. When you select it, this window appears: Just as for book creation using a text file, you must choose a title and select your font. Once a title has been entered, the “Continue” button will light up and you can start typing your text directly into the book, which looks like this: In this mode, you may also paste text from other sources directly into the book. Notice that the character limit is shown to you in the top left corner of the right-facing page. In this example, I have used 155 characters so far. The total is 8000. Remember that characters includes spaces, otherwise the count may seem off. There are also two-tabs. “Options” will allow you to go back to the title and font selection window. You can go back to this window and “Exit” to discard your work and keep the book blank. “Publish” will bring you to the same warning message shown before, reminding you that once you hit the “Publish” button the book cannot be changed. Careful: You can open a blank book or blank sheet of paper while it is in a container (bag, trunk, chest, etc.) not your inventory - but you will not be able to publish it and if you click "publish" at this point it will delete the text! You can go through the whole publishing process, but when you finally hit the “publish” button you will instead only get a confusing message: “Failed to publish because the book is in use by another player.” Make sure you always work with blank books and sheets of paper in your inventory. To make copies of a sheet or book use a printing press. Advanced Tips Formatting When you use the “import text” option to create a book, you can use a few simple BBCode tags to format your book. For items you want to bold, enclose them In b/b. For items you want to italicize, enclose them In i/i. For items you want to underline, enclose them In u/u. For items you want to strikethrough, enclose them In s/s. For items you want to show in a different color, predate it with the desired hex color code in your text file: You can find a particular code using sites like http://html-color-codes.info/ or http://adobe.color.com. There may be occasions where you would like to center text, or justify it in different ways. This can only be done by carefully adding spaces to the text file. To create exact centering, measure the spacing on the screen when “previewing” the book. Make any adjustments you need in the text file and import it again, over and over until it looks good. There are no formatting options when you write text directly onto a book or sheet of paper, using the “write” option. Title Pages You may want to consider adding a title page to books you create. Since the tool tips do not contain a lot of information, and the title is limited to 32 characters, these can be helpful to readers. Here is an example which includes a series title, a date, a limited edition number and something called the “NBBN” I will explain next: Title pages are entirely optional and there is no standard format. Remember that if you use them, they count against the character limit. The New Britannia Book Number or NBBN Please consider adding a unique identifier to the books you create which will help collectors and librarians in the future. It is called the New Britannia Book Number, or NBBN. It functions like an ISBN on real books. In order to use it, you need to reserve a publisher number in this thread. You can see the list of numbers reserved already in this post. To reserve yours, add a reply with the number you want. SotA has a very creative community and using this number will make it easier for everyone to identify and appreciate the work that is produced. Editing You may want to consider having others review your work before you publish it. There are many good writers in the game already, but even good writers will tell you that the things they write do not emerge perfectly in a first draft. At the very least, make sure to use a spell checker before you create your text files. Unfortunately, there is no spell check in-game. Be careful because all publishing is final! If you want to enlist others to help review your work, there are many willing to do so. One group that offers free and friendly peer review is the SotA Writing Round Table. Property Rights According to standard game licensing agreements, you should assume that anything you produce in-game no longer remains your property. There is no copyrighting. This is an area that can fall under international laws and is very complex. Best to assume that once you publish it, it is not private property anymore. If that concerns you, you may not want to put your writing in the game. Why Write and Publish in New Britannia? Anyone who has played Ultima Online is familiar with the value of book publishing in-game. For those who have not, there are a few reasons you might consider. First, it allows your unique creativity to become part of the game world itself. What is written can be shared with others. There is a simple joy that comes from the creative process itself and infusing a little more of yourself into the game. Second, it provides a richer level of role-playing centered on letters and books. Many enjoy the process of collecting, running libraries, or operating bookstores. Records can be kept of meetings and transactions. Communication can be delivered in new ways. Third, books and sheets of paper can be extremely useful. They can be placed in important locations to give information to other players. This can be done for player-run quests or to indicate items on sale at a vendor. They can be guides and directories. The uses are potentially endless. This does not exhaust the possibilities. Writing and publishing in SotA is a tool that offers virtually limitless possibilities to enjoy the world of New Britannia and enrich it. Category:Lore Category:Features Category:Gameplay Category:Guides